Volcano The Bear have, in the words of The Wire magazine, “produced some of the finest, wildest British music of the last 10 years on record and on stage…”.
[audio:Volcano the Bear – Wooden Sailus.mp3]Or, as Losing Today puts it, “No one sounds, has sounded, or will ever sound quite like Volcano the Bear.” They are one of experimental music’s best kept secrets. A calculatedly hysterical melting pot of This Heat, Robert Wyatt, Faust and The Residents, musique concrète and ethno-folk,all seen through a prism of occasionally theatrical improvisations and unhinged set pieces.
Formed in 1995, and after several self-released tapes & cdrs, VTB so excited Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton that he brought his United Dairies label out of cold storage to release their first album proper, ‘The Inhazer Decline’, in 2000.
Volcano The Bear @ Pauze Gent
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=1NVx1MqLa3o
Since then, they’ve released music on such labels as Misra, Beta Lactam Ring, Textile, Digitalis, Pickled Egg, Alt Vinyl, and No-Fi as well as their own imprints Volucan & Volfurten. On record, Volcano The Bear offer stark and stunning absurdities, in the most bizarrely beautiful way.
In their unique, often chaotic live shows, the adrenalin and invention drips from their earlobes as they thrust spectacular oddities in the faces of their audiences, always aided by their sublime multi-instrumentalism. Live collaborations have included performances with Canadian film maker & improvisor Michael Snow and Swedish free jazz legend Mats Gustafsson.
“Tannhäuser Sterben & Das Tod zerstören, verzerren, reißen Klänge auseinander, werfen ihre Umhänge darüber und zaubern darunter etwas neues hervor. Thomas Mahmoud (The Oliver Twist Kooperation, Aggro Cologne, Ives#1, ex Von Spar) und Gerald Mandl (Mediengruppe Telekommander) verarbeiten Bass, Drums, Gesang und Synthesizer mit Loops und Samplings und kombinieren diese mit Field Recordings und Samplern. Ihre Sprache ist düstere Kryptik aus Krautrock und Minimal.”
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Volcano The Bear LIVE
+ Tannhäuser Sterben und das Tod
Wednesday, 29 June 2011 | 21:00 CET
Berghain | Am Wriezener Bahnhof | 10243 Berlin/Friedrichshain
http://www.myspace.com/volcanothebear | http://berghain.de
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